


The Devil You Don't

by StormXWR



Category: Lovecraft Country (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, During Canon, F/F, Internal Conflict, Missing Scene, Pathos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28065324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormXWR/pseuds/StormXWR
Summary: After Ruby leaves the guide shop with Christina in Episode 109 (Rewind 1921), she spends the days until the Autumnal Equinox with Christina at William's manor. What happened in those days?
Relationships: Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite, Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite/William
Comments: 31
Kudos: 57





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby is heavily conflicted after her night with Christina.

_She was becoming accustomed to waking up disoriented here._

The fog in Ruby’s brain lifted as she surveyed the first floor from the landing of the main staircase. She didn’t realize they made such a mess. Of course, she hadn’t been paying much attention to her surroundings.

If the tension between them was kindling; that first kiss between them had been the match. It caught like wildfire and carried the women from the basement to the bedroom, catching on every landmark in between.

She recognized Christina’s black dress puddled by her feet and vaguely remembered unhooking the little clasps. As for her own clothes…well, those could be anywhere.

A glint of light caught her eye and she reached down to snatch her garter from between the spokes of the bannister. She shoved it into the pocket of William’s robe, noting the clinking sound that the clips made against the weight that was already there.

Taking a cautionary glance up the staircase, she quietly padded the rest of the way down. She began scooping up the pieces of her scattered outfit as she found them while retracing their steps.

_When had they knocked over the fruit basket?_

She placed the bronze basket back on the cocktail table in the sitting room as she negotiated scattered grapes and other fruits.

The last few hours of the night were still cloudy, reminding her of the cemetery as she wondered if Christina had ever played with her memories. Leti had given her an earful and oh, how she’d learned so much about her (as of a few hours ago) lover. 

She had the gist of the Ardham story, but that morning she had left Leti where she stood again, making it all the way to the door of Christina’s black Cadillac when the shorter woman shoved the paperback in her face.

_That damn Leti._

She remembered sinking into the driver’s seat as she skimmed each chapter of the book. She stared at the little photo on the back and remembered Emmett — a bright and innocent boy whose potential was brutally extinguished before he had the chance to leave his mark on the world.

Her nephew represented a legacy for all of them, and Ruby couldn’t allow it to be ravaged before he even arrived in this fucked up world. She alone had the ability to salvage some semblance of an interrupted life for him and...

She’d had so many questions, and Leti supplemented the future George’s novel with details from her time in Ardham while simultaneously validating what Christina already told her.

She spoke of being made to forget, terrifying illusions, and manipulation all at Christina’s hands.

Leti called herself coming clean. Ruby snorted and shook her head.

Sure she had filled in some of the blanks in Christina’s story, but that didn’t count for being honest and it _hardly_ made up for lying to her face without flinching for half the summer.

On the other hand, Christina had told her the dirty truth weeks ago. Standing there drenched in blood, she’d gone into detail about Tic and his lineage, the sons of Adam and had answered every one of Ruby’s questions before cleaning herself up. Still she had never spoken about her powers of manipulation or the awful mind games she’d played at the lodge.

Ruby wasn’t sure if she’d tamed the Beast or crawled into it’s belly.

Slivers of morning light were now pouring through the bow windows.

She cursed Leti again, and then herself.

She should have done this hours ago. Glancing once more toward the upstairs she steeled her nerves, drawing the robe tighter. 

It still smelled like _her_ and William.

_Family means sacrificing everything._

Leti didn’t know just how big of a request that was. 

Eloise would say that no matter what— she, Leti and Marvin were all each other had, and needed to look out for each other. Over the years, Leti managed to find herself in trouble every single time something good happened for Ruby. She had come to think of it as a little sister tax.

Up until a year ago, that tax had been mostly given and forgotten. When it was more than Ruby could handle, she’d go to Eloise or Marvin for the difference, covering for Leti and absorbing their negative comments. Then Leti would pop up for holidays and special occasions like the family celebrity, shielded from the chaos she’d caused with her neediness. 

She was cordial enough with Marvin, but she could only take his issues with women in doses.Compared to them, he had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth, but somehow he believed that their mother’s brand of abandonment and neglect was specific to him.

In recent years, the most pleasant visit between them could turn into a Leti or Eloise bashing session that made Ruby grateful that he lived so far away.

With one sibling a thousand miles away and the other in the wind, she and Eloise had grown closer than ever. Although, Ruby guessed, not as close as most mother’s and their first daughters. They shared Eloise’s room, and had become fixtures in Southside night life — Ruby playing up to 4 gigs a week and Eloise running numbers under her fortune telling front. Money was coming in faster than they could spend it, and they had discussed getting out of boarding house life once and for all. A year ago yesterday, that money, all of it was used to bury her mother who died a hustler at 52.

Just a few days later, she’d protected the empty seat between her and Marvin at Eloise’s funeral while waiting for Leti to show up and realized that Ruby was all Ruby had. Leti’s absence and Marvin’s distance showed her just how truly alone she was.

Knitting her eyebrows, Ruby physically shook those thoughts away. She wanted to use these quiet moments at the manor to bask in her afterglow, not ruminate on her family’s ghosts.

Besides, she might never be welcomed back after this.

It would take some time, but she’d be able to find some solace in the fact that she had freed the woman Christina had called Del.

The more she lived as Christina’s former groundskeeper, the more she’d come to form some kind of reverence for Hillary. She didn’t go looking for the woman’s memories, but sometimes…they were there. It was enough to bring her down into the basement to tend to her. Wiping her face, brushing her hair. All the time wondering how much of the real Del was still in that body? She didn’t know, but keeping those tubes in her didn’t sit right with her spirit. So when they’d gotten back to the manor, she let her rest for good.

Bluffing hadn’t been her favorite, but after her reluctant admission to her plans for Tic, Ruby was painfully aware that there were depths to Christina’s darkness. 

She was protective of her transformation spell and took great pride in her part in creating it. That was evident in the way she spoke about completing William’s spell every chance she got. So to avoid insulting her, she lied, and Christina bought her story about wanting to be a redhead.

The days following had felt like the life and love that she deserved. It was like something out of some kind of twisted musical where the couple was 50 percent less lily white and spent their time fucking instead of singing songs.

_Not fucking, Ruby. Making love._

The witch had called it magic. Ruby had equated it to chemistry. By any name, it existed between them, leaving her heart fluttering and legs rubbery and last night was no exception.

She bit her lip, fantasizing about going back upstairs to convince Christina not go to Ardham; to hole up in the manor with her and never come out again. Did she really have to be immortal? Couldn’t she leave her evil cult upbringing and psychotic aspirations behind?

Ruby liked to believe that with some convincing she could.

That is until she started asking questions. Like what the fuck did she do with Del’s body?

The basement door loomed, and she assured herself that she was making the right decision.

She straightened, reached for the door.

It was unlocked. She dropped her hairpin back into the pocket of William's robe and slipped into the dark stairwell.

_This would be quick._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I hope you've enjoyed this chapter.
> 
> I'd love to hear your feedback. Comments and questions (challenge invitations?) welcome.


	2. Best Laid Plans: Night one, Pt one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby and Christina exchange stories.

She was in a better mood after soaking off the events of the last 24 hours— the shooting at the boarding house, both arguments with Christina _and_ the one with Leti, poor Emmett and Dee. Hillary/Del.

“In here.”

Ruby released her hold on the basement doorknob, and turned to the bar where William kept his collection of spirits.

“What are you doing?”

She watched amused as Christina stood before the wall of peculiar shaped bottles. After some contemplation, she made a choice grabbing one in each hand. She popped and smelled their corks before placing them on the counter in front of Ruby.

“I’ve been wanting to do this.” Christina grinned, pouring a finger of the first bottle into each of the tumblers, she’d set out.

Ruby hadn’t planned to spend the rest of the day drinking, but she was happy to participate in Christina’s celebration. She slid onto a stool and lifted her glass to meet her’s.

“Cheers.”

They locked eyes over clinking glasses and tossed it back too quickly to taste.

Christina wasted no time pouring from the second bottle.

“With this much hooch you’d forget that Uncle Sam just eased up on the liquor laws.”  
  
Ruby inclined her head curiously at the taller woman’s sniff of laughter.

“Men like William never had to worry about prohibition,” she shook her head, taking another swallow.

Ruby sipped slowly, thinking on that, “What kind of man _was_ William?”

Christina paused mid-pour, “Erudite, aloof, naive.”

“Dorky.”

She laughed outright, “Indeed.”

“How long were you together?”Ruby finished her second splash, and grabbed the bottle of amber liquid herself.

“I suppose I was Dee’s age the first time we met.”

Ruby frowned, “Don’t tell me he was a pedophile.”

Christina bristled at her wording, “I was raised in a cult, Ruby. Not a monastery.” She thought for a moment, “Although they’re both filled with sycophants.”

Ruby smiled into her glass.

“When William revealed his work in metamorphosis his ideas were rejected. However, my father saw his talent for spell work and kept him close. When his abilities matured, my father made moves to secure his loyalty using me.” She paused to take in Ruby’s expression, “As he prepared to take over the Sons’ lodge, my father negotiated a betrothal.”

“That’s fucked up.” Ruby flinched at the revelation.

Christina shrugged, “I saw it as a chance to get access to the best wizard next to my father. I convinced William that our marriage was my idea, and that by working on his transformation spell with me, he could avoid sharing his secrets with those who wished to harm him.”

Ruby nodded slowly, “Lancaster.”

“Had he survived and taken over the lodge, we would be married by winter.”

Ruby was prepared to placate Christina with words of sympathy, but she hears no sorrow in her voice. She was back to the wall, pensively searching for her next drink.

“Do you miss him?”

“I suppose. In the same way I miss my father,” Christina tossed over her shoulder.

“Grab that good Kentucky Bourbon.”

Christina complied, lifting the angled bottle from a high glass shelf. She performed her little ritual and nodded at the smell of the cork. Ruby finished sipping and grabbed the bottle to pour her next.

“Eloise tried to marry me off to an old man — a pastor, when I was 16.” She reached for Christina’s glass. “I spoke to him on the phone once.” She glanced up to meet watchful pale eyes and then back down to what she was doing. “He said that he was starting a new church out west in Las Vegas so that the gamblers, whores and I*d*ans could get to know Jesus.” She slapped the counter with her palm doing her best impression of a baptist preacher.

“Mama was over the _moon_. It was all she could talk about. Took me to get my hair done, even got me a new dress for his visit.” She sighed whimsically, “I didn’t know what to make of it all...I guess I was just happy to be her favorite for a little while.”

Christina could relate to that, she had vied for her own father’s attention until his death.

“And?”

“Aaaand he came to visit. Mama Introduced him to the whole family.” She made a dismissive gesture with her tumbler, ”Then he told us that he would come back next summer for Leti instead.”

Christina wasn’t sure what to say to that. There were never any siblings in the Braithwaite household to compete with.

“Did he?”

Ruby shook her head no. “She kept the letters and the cash he sent every Christmas though. Eloise wasn’t about to let some jack leg preacher carry off her pretty mulatto baby.”

She laughed as Christina watched with acute seriousness.

She held up her glass with a shrug, inviting the towering woman to toast, “The best laid plans of mice and men—“

Christina touched the lipstick stained rim of her glass to Ruby’s, “-often go awry.”


	3. Necessary Care

Christina leaned back to rest her elbows on the top bar as Ruby perused William’s collection.

Seemingly oblivious to the eyes on her, the woman took her time turning each bottle by its neck as she squinted, leaning in closely to read the labels. She mumbled the proof of each bottle out loud as she found it, giving a dissatisfied snort at the lower amounts.  
  
“30? We’re going to need something a little stronger than that.”

Taking samples of William’s fine spirits had turned into a full on raid of his collection as they took turns all evening pulling from the wall.

Perched on the underbar — the lower surface where a real bartender would prepare drinks, the witch sat enjoying the rhythmic swing of Ruby’s rear as she searched for the next tasty pour.

Christina moved to the music too. Her shoulders bobbed in time to the only thing suitable on the radio according to Ruby. Disappointed with William’s record collection, she had turned the knob until she found something she could stand.

At this hour that would be calypso.

Christina was settling into the outcome of going toe to toe with seasoned bar dweller Ruby. With every taste her guard lowered, making her a little more chatty than she would have preferred over the past hour. Ruby seemed to relax too, and Christina was grateful to finally find some common ground with the woman while in her own skin.

Frankly, she had hoped for a reenactment of their drunken night after Denmark Vesey’s, but Ruby’s tolerance was a variable she hadn’t considered.

She wasn’t discouraged. The past 24 hours had been pivotal for her grand design. After endless planning, it had come together in the blink of an eye. The key to the time machine had cost her a pet, but she’d get it back when Tic was gone. Titus’s pages, on the other hand, were practically free. Leti didn’t even negotiate to learn the invulnerability spell.

As for Lancaster, that hadn’t gone the way she intended, but on the bright side, he was out of the picture for good.

And that morning she’d gotten to show off a little. Giving Ruby and the “gang” a look at what she could really do.

_“Hello?” She had answered the phone in William’s voice. There was a pause from the caller and then Ruby spoke._

_I need you to come to the guide shop._

_Where?_

_Christina, I need **you**._

She actually did know where the guide shop was, but she had never heard that combination of words next to her name. Not in Ruby’s alto tones. So, she’d done what was necessary to force the transformation. Then, driving like a maniac, she arrived in record time, even for her.

Quite literally, she’d come to the rescue, saving the day and walking out with the “girl”, and securing Atticus for the Autumnal Equinox.

No, she wasn’t discouraged. This was a celebration and she was _ecstatic._

“I’m cutting you off,” Ruby’s voice cut through her thoughts. She settled on a green tinted bottle and brought it over. “Your eyes are glossing over.”

Christina bounced her calf, eyes roaming as she neared, challenging her to step into her space. Ruby came as close as she dared, stopping just within reach.

“We can’t all be gifted with your endurance.” She lifted her glass for Ruby to pour.

Brown eyes narrowed into slits at her teasing, “This from the man...the woman who never finishes.”

She pinched back her grin, “I do my best.”

Ruby pursed her lips at that and turned her attention back to the bottle. Christina was suddenly inclined to pull her closer.

Instead she pulled the bottle from her grip and returned the pouring favor.

“While I do have theories on using climactic energy to amplify the metamorphosis spell-”

“Climactic energy? Is that your way of saying that you want to put some sperm in the potion…” She pretended to gag.

Christina took on a distant expression as she considered that idea.

“-I’m wary of the potential outcomes,” she continued. “Surely you remember yesterday’s carnage.”

She hadn’t intended to remind her of Till’s murder, but now she cursed herself for triggering her wounded gaze.

_He looked like a monster._

Ruby’s words hadn’t meant much to her then. They still didn’t, but she’d felt the weight of the cotton gin tearing at her throat, and she’d seen Dee’s broken little kid body. She could understand why the savagery plunged her into despair.

“Ruby-“

This time she did reach for her. Setting the bottle and tumbler down behind herself, she grabbed the woman’s brown hands in her own. She waited for Ruby to recoil as was the norm of late when she touched her. When that didn’t come she spoke softly.

“Last night, I waited for you to come back. When you didn’t return I…did some reflecting.” 

“Go on.”

She reeled Ruby in until she reluctantly stood between her knees. “No child should ever have to endure anything as harrowing as the bigotry Emmett Till experienced.” She pressed further as the muscle in Ruby’s jaw worked, “I spoke too harshly.” She squeezed her hands for emphasis.

The radio spit out the sounds of upbeat tiki lounge music, as Harry Belafonte’s cries of Day-O! inappropriately filled the first floor.

No more dancing.

Ruby stared her down. She’d walked away from that look yesterday. The emotional bits weren’t easy for her. Not in her own body.

She almost regretted her moment of humility as Ruby twisted her hands free. She considered divulging the details of her self-inflicted assault the night before, but thought better of it.

“It still hurts.”

She nodded contritely as Ruby looked for signs of sincerity.

“And just because I came here doesn’t mean that I don’t care!” Her voice raised an octave as she pleaded.

Christina spoke softly, “You needed to be cared for.”

Ruby’s expression softened, as she let the words penetrate. There was a long moment as the music faded leaving the crackle of the radio to fill the silence.

“Give me that.” She planted a palm on a partially exposed bit of skin just above Christina’s knee and leaned in. She reached for the green bottle from the bar behind her.

Christina held her place as Ruby pressed her softness against her. She breathed in the familiar combination of oils and butters that she’d come to identify as her scent. It mixed well with the sweet aromas wafting from the open bottles that decorated the bar. She felt her nipples tighten under her dress. With that hand resting on her thigh, it would be so easy to just…

Christina reached, but the moment was over quickly as Ruby slipped through her fingers and away from the V of her legs.

She resealed the bottle and began clearing the bar.

“You don’t want me to touch you.” It was part question, part statement.

“I don’t like being grabbed by anyone.” She tapped the air with a manicured finger for emphasis, “A progressive 50’s woman like yourself should understand not wanting to be manhandled.”

With Ruby’s back turned Christina allowed her smile to spread.

“You’re right. I promise to be more delicate with your body.”

She tossed a glance over her shoulder at Christina's suggestive tone, and seeing the witch’s self-satisfied expression laughed uneasily,“And what makes you think you’ll get another chance to fuck me?”

Christina shrugged, “I never thought of what we are doing as fucking.”

“Being reborn, or whatever,” Ruby goaded further, ignoring Christina’s use of present tense.

“Some might say an orgasm is the cousin of death — _La petit mort_.”

“We had to read Shakespeare in the negro schools too, Christina.”

“Then the lady doth protest too much, me thinks.”

“You need to get thee ass to a nunnery.”

Christina laughed out loud then, delighted by their banter. She slid from her seat on the undercounter to assist Ruby with the last displaced liquor bottle, placing it high in the cabinet.

“Thank you,” Ruby exhaled. Her eyes sank low with fatigue as Christina realized that she likely hadn’t slept since her post coital siesta over 24 hours ago.  
  
Wrist angled and all business again, she strode past the shorter woman and over to the basement.“I still have some things to wrap up...” She leaned back against the door, her best attempt at looking casual and sober ”as William.”

Her fingers drummed against the heavy brass key in her pocket as she channeled her anticipation, hoping that Ruby was open to what she inferred.

Instead she sauntered by with a well-timed yawn, “Then I’ll come and find you in the morning.”

* * *

Exhaustion didn’t hit Ruby until she was climbing the stairs. She palmed the wall, as she found her way to the room she’d called the greenhouse.

There were many rooms in the manor. During those first few days with William, she had poked around some, but her focus would continually go back to her burning question.

_What was in the basement?_

In some ways she wished she could go back to not knowing. To the time when William was William and magic was a potion in a vial. It was a simpler time.

Now, she felt along searching for that spot. The one just a little further down the hallway from William’s…Christina’s lair. She’d found it that afternoon on accident when she’d collapsed against the wood paneling, finally able to catch her breath after the events of the last 24 or so hours.

There.

She spotted a line of yellow light leaking from under the wall. She found it. Placing her hand and elbow flush against the panel she pushed until the wall gave and swiveled open with a rumble, spilling moonlight into the hallway.

She breathed a sigh of wondrous relief as she stepped in and pushed the passage closed behind her.

It was a large room. Larger even than her room at the boarding house a few blocks away. There was the familiar, plank flooring and gold/crimson tones in the decor, but without the masculine overtones. Maybe a spare room for a mistress or a guest. She’d done a lap around the space, and decided that she didn’t know why it was tucked away, but it was perfect for her.

Although sparsely-leaved vines climbed the outer glass it wasn’t a real greenhouse. In fact, it looked more like storage with white sheets draped haphazardly over large objects in the shape of furniture, but when Ruby had stumbled in that afternoon, the thick and humid air had reminded her of a nursery. It was a result of the room being walled on two sides with the bow paned glass of an atrium. 

That afternoon, she’d sat in the soaking tub in front of the arching window panes and marveled at the view of William’s estate. The bath wasn’t as large or luxurious like the one down the hall— in comparison, it was more of a bird bath, but it beat sharing a bathroom with the transient residents at Leti’s boarding house.

There was a bed in the room too— a dusty, curtained monstrosity that Ruby had immediately stripped down to its bare layers. A sheet and quilt would be just fine, even this late in the summer.

It was a far cry from the sex bed — the peculiar round pedestal where she and Chris…William had done nasty things. _Very_ nasty things.

She shuddered at the memory as she undressed, unbothered by the uncovered windows.

She no longer had Hillary to hide behind, Del was gone and that meant facing Christina and whatever hung in the air between them as herself. Even though she was still sorting through her feelings about the witch’s body swapping and secret plotting, her curiosities had become undeniable during her time at Hippolyta’s where she was minding Dee. She’d spent balmy summer nights on the fire escape, daydreaming about her moments with William, until softer, leaner features invaded her memories, replacing him.

That’s when she would climb back into the apartment seeking out Dee to shift her focus.

_Even on today of all days, you were a woman who wanted what you wanted._

Her thoughts turned to their conversation in the parlor, where she thought Christina might go for round two right there on the carpet. She was disgusted with herself for wishing she’d _let_ her instead of begging her to give a damn. 

It was the reason she was avoiding the bedroom lair in this very moment—she didn’t trust her resolve against Christina’s hungry gazes. She wondered if the blonde would come looking for her in her masculine form after she was done messing around in the basement.

Having used her last wind of energy to push against the panel, Ruby climbed onto the bed with the grace of toddler. She sank into its downy mattress and pulled the linens over her head, hiding from the ominous silhouettes around the room.

Had it not been for Dee, she may not have come back here.

Her sister had put them in a life or death situation and then left her to go protect Tic. She had watched the bullets bounce off of Leti, from her place tucked nearby. She’d crawled after her pregnant baby sister as she abandoned her castle to protect her chosen family.

And that’s when it clicked. She, Ruby was not included in that group of people.

So, Ruby thought, forgive her for finally feeling safe when Christina screeched up to the guide shop in her signature silver hog, making a fuss over her and spelling away her cuts.

_You needed to be cared for._

The witch’s words from earlier echoed. She could take or leave that semblance of an apology. She never expected her to understand. She had asked her to feel. Clearly Christina still had some work to do on that front, but at least she was listening and trying. She may be privileged —the most privileged of the privileged, but Ruby reasoned that Christina couldn’t be racist. And despite the fact that she was actively celebrating her day of nefarious wins, Ruby didn't feel that she was violent, at least not like the whites who were the cause of all this.

Besides she had forgiven far worse transgressions from former lovers. None of them female but some of them white, all of them ornery just like her father. She hadn’t seen that trait in William, but in Christina there it was. Even her way of making a fuss over her was more...hard.

_She’d taken in the disarray of the shop and turned to Ruby. Then she noticed the debris clinging to the same outfit in which she’d seen Ruby last._

_“What’s going on?” She asked, her voice low and dangerous as she pulled a long sliver of wood from the skirt of her dress, holding it up for Ruby to see as if she needed to show proof.   
_

_“We were…attacked,” Ruby said as she shrugged, looking toward the garage where Diana had passed out in Montrose’s arms._

_“You’re bleeding,” she was bent to the side, lifting Ruby’s skirt just enough to get a better look at her busted knees. Finding them mangled, she crouched in her red dress. She blew at the dirt and glass there before gingerly brushing them off with her hands._   
  
_“I’m ok.” Ruby said, pulling her up by her forearms._

_“I was worried,” she snapped, still removing shards, this time from Ruby’s hair. “Now I know that my intuition was correct.”_   
  
_She stretched one of Ruby’s arms out, turning it to inspect her elbow and finding it bloodied as well._

_“I didn’t call you here for m—,“_

_Ruby gasped as the hamburger texture of her elbow smoothed into its normal creases. She ran her fingers over the skin and looked back up at Christina, dumbfounded._

_“Y’all comin’?” Leti asked impatiently from behind Ruby, fulfilling her role as the ill-timed little sister._

_In her awkwardness at being seen, Ruby attempted to snatch her arm away._

_Christina held it firmly. “Talk later?” She’d said it with a smile, but it did little to hide the seething behind her eyes as she stared past her at the_ _younger woman._

_It was that look that had prompted her to make Christina promise not to hurt Leti._

_Afterward, she’d felt no shame walking out on the white woman’s heels for all the neighborhood to see._

No, she didn’t like being grabbed, but there was something about belonging to someone that made her just…

She shook that thought away. _Belonging?_ Might as well say slave.

She fitfully tossed under the covers, as her thoughts ran a mile a minute.

If only she could sleep, things might be clearer in the morning.

She slid her hands down and over her hips, imagining slim, busy fingers kneading her thighs, working their way inward. They’d claw at her skin until she parted her legs while pink lips breathed sweet nothings into her ear.

It always stopped there.

Frustration set in as her mind grew hazy about what came next. She beat the covers off and buried her face in the pillow as she willed herself to sleep.

* * *

By the time the splash came, Christina was already making her way back up the winding staircase. She peaked over the edge, confirming that Del was gone for good, plunged into void beneath the manor. Seeing nothing but blackness, she flattened William’s back against the stones and tookeach stairstep carefully until she finally reached the wooden ceiling. She pushed open the hatch, with a raspy masculine grunt and then she was back in the basement.

_Thank God._

She latched the door and covered it, before relaxing into that sentiment.

Next, she crossed over to the safe and opened it. She reached behindWilliam’s odds and ends and pulled out the box that held the roll of negatives and the time machine key.

Nothing she could do with them at this hour.

She tucked them back in place and shut the door to the safe, but not before snagging one of the little potion vials. She slipped it into the pocket of William’s dungarees.

She wondered if Ruby was still awake.

Carrying the groundskeeper’s stiff awkward body down the narrow stairwell had taken longer than she thought it would. She would survive a slip, but she didn’t know what lived in the depths below the manor, and tonight she wanted to remain ignorant.

Tidying up after herself, she folded the blanket that used to cover Del into a tight ball.

Another one of her developments, a quilt, patterned with the protection emblem and spelled to neither heal or damage. Draped over Del, it kept her from healing enough to wake from her stasis. On William, it kept his body alive, the only deterioration coming from bleeding out in the water during the time it took for Christina to retrieve him.

She placed the blanket at the foot of Del’s old bed, and turned to William.

“I promise I will never do that to you.”

She stroked his hair and pushed it behind his ear. It was getting long. Ruby had started looking after Del, maybe it was time she started doing more for William’s body than wiping him down. She wouldn’t ask Ruby to do it, she didn’t want her to get any more attached to the real William than she already was. Besides, the woman would probably assume Christina was trying to turn her into the maid.

She refocused her attention as she locked the basement door.

Ruby said she would find her in the morning, completely sidestepping her implied offer to spend the night with her as William.

Still, she’d caught it, the barely detectable pinch at the corners of her eyes, and the lift at the corner of her mouth.

It was enough confirmation for Christina to begin researching her new plan.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr StormXWR
> 
> Questions, comments, requests?


End file.
